


indian summer

by ArsenicInYourPudding



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Gen, kid's gotta do something to earn his trading cards, kinda pointless, nico does chores for thanatos, underworld fam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 00:58:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16943991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArsenicInYourPudding/pseuds/ArsenicInYourPudding
Summary: Nico helps out where he can. This has sometimes surprising consequences.





	indian summer

**Author's Note:**

> I had a dream about this a while back, so if there's any narrative holes or inconsistencies, that's why. I also haven't written anything in like, a year. Whatever.

It’s October 21st in Bar Harbor, Maine, and the leaves have yet to change. 

Everyone seems unsettled by this - from the tourists with cameras around their necks complaining by the library, to the waitress in the diner talking about global warming with the cook through the window as she waves a laminated menu like a fan with a slow  _ wubwubwub  _ of flexing plastic. Nico observes curiously over his pancakes, glancing out the window at the oddly green park across the street.

It had been unseasonably warm everywhere he’d been lately - Oregon, grumbling about the 80-degree heat wave; Wyoming, whole sections of the western canyons consumed by wildfires; even Camp Half-Blood, with its magically stabilized weather patterns. People are starting to take notice, and it won’t be long before they start getting concerned, rather than irritated.

Nico pays his tab with a ten from his back pocket, leaving it tucked under his plate and heading toward the bathroom. He switches the lights off as he goes inside and steps into a puddle of darker shadow near the sink, feeling a pull in his gut as he melts into the shadow.

The Underworld is, predictably, much cooler than aboveground. Nico skirts the E-Z lane, holding up a security badge with a celestial bronze stripe at the bypass gate. The metal detector begins to glow a soft, eerie bluish-purple, and Nico heads through toward the palace.

Just to the right of the main stairs, a path branches off toward a door set into the base of the hill. Nico veers toward it, hopping up on the stoop and dropping the heavy iron ring against the door from as high up as he can reach. The door doesn’t open, and Nico frowns. He drops the knocker against the door again. Nothing happens, and he raises the ring to knock a third time.

The ring gets pulled from his grip as the door swings open. Nico stumbles, surprised, and looks up. Thanatos is staring down at him, and he has the overwhelming feeling of being a mouse caught in an owl’s stare. Nico fishes in his pocket and pulls out a necklace set with a large emerald, holding it out mutely.

Thanatos blinks at it, his scowl clearing for a second. “Oh. Yes, thank you. Very helpful.” He turns to head back into the gloom behind him, letting the door fall shut toward Nico’s face. Nico sidesteps through quickly enough to not get smacked by the heavy wood, looking curiously around the office.

The room is dominated by paper. Scrolls lay in piles on tables and behind chair legs, tied with ribbons with wax seals, or twine, or, in some cases, bright neon hair ties. Stacks of paper have built uneven battlements around the edges of a large desk in the middle of the room. A glowing iPad is propped up against the interior of the paper wall. Thanatos sits down in a leather desk chair, its arms worn and cracking. His wings flop outside the arms of the chair, brushing against the stone floor. His elbows brace on the desk, fingers propped against his temples. He stares mutely at the iPad’s screen.

Nico pauses awkwardly, then clears his throat. Thanatos looks up, startled that he isn’t alone. “Is-- Is something wrong?”

Thanatos stares at him for a second, like he doesn’t understand. “...Why do you ask?”

It’s a fair question. Nico fidgets a little bit, glancing at a large glass sphere floating in a far corner of the room. The necklace he handed over is affixed to the side, blocking the greenish glow. A face swirls to the front of the tank, its features fuzzy and indistinct, before spinning away again.

“You seem stressed?” It’s weak, even to Nico’s ears, and Thanatos’s expression is dipping toward  _ irritated _ . Nico coughs into his elbow and makes an effort to straighten his posture. “I mean, I’d like to do something to help out, if I can.”

He sighs, sinking down into his chair and massaging his temples with his fingertips. “There’s nothing you can do,” Thanatos tells him, but it mostly just sounds exhausted. “Unless you’d care to try your hand at kidnapping a goddess, in which case, it’s your funeral.”

Nico’s eyebrows bounce up. Carefully, he skirts around a pile of yellowing death certificates written in German to a chair on the other side of the desk. He can’t see Thanatos over the stacks of papers, so he boosts himself up to perch on the back of the chair.

“Oh, for--” Thanatos begins, gesturing indignantly at Nico’s seating arrangements, before rolling his eyes. “Persephone hasn’t returned. If you  _ must  _ know.”

It takes Nico a little mental math, which is perfectly understandable, considering that he’s been in six different time zones in the last day and a half. “The equinox was almost a month ago,” he observes, confused.

“Thank you, Pope Gregory the Thirteenth,” Thanatos grouses, waving a hand at him. “We are quite aware of how long it has been.”

“I mean,” Nico says, choosing to ignore his sarcasm, “one or two days is one thing, right? Sometimes she’s not  _ exactly _ on schedule, I know Da-- Hades doesn’t like that.” That would be an understatement - two years ago, it took Persephone an extra three days past the fall equinox to return to the Underworld. Hades was so grouchy about it that Nico ended up staying at Camp Jupiter for almost four months, just to avoid him. “Do you know why?”

Thanatos shrugs, refocusing on his iPad. “Not for sure. Your father--” Nico winces at that “--can’t exactly send out a search party, for fear of offending the other gods. He can’t even ask Hermes to deliver a message, lest that the other gods think he is accusing  _ them  _ of breaking the agreement.”

Nico nods. They’d already been through two wars in the past six years, no one wants to cause a rift at the Olympian family dinner table while they’re still recovering. “So he’s just going crazy down here,” Nico concludes, lacing his fingers together between his knees. “No one’s heard anything from her?”

“Nothing,” Thanatos confirms grimly, shaking his head. He inhales deeply, sitting back in his chair. “So, in answer to your question, no. There’s nothing  _ any  _ of us can do, that’s the point here.”

He frowns, but doesn’t press the issue. For all his detached lack of concern for human welfare, Thanatos doesn’t  _ actually  _ want Nico to die a violent death, and historically has prevented him from causing it himself. Nico changes tack, sitting up on the back of the chair. “Do you have anything else for me?”

Thanatos cocks his head to the side, managing to look disconcertingly bird-like. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”

“Not really,” Nico says, shrugging.

He sighs, and it sounds skeptical, but Thanatos picks his iPad up off the desk. His long fingers flick against the screen for a minute. “Rockaway Beach, Oregon,” he says after a moment. “Home of the world’s largest corn dog, incidentally. Someone has been calling up the dead in the area with a disturbing frequency lately.”

Not an uncommon chore, not since the Doors of Death had been left propped open last year. Mediums and psychics, mortal and demigod alike, had gotten bold, overconfident in their dealings with the dead. Nico nods, pulling a small spiral notebook out of the pocket of his jacket. He scribbles down  _ Rockaway Beach, OR - psychics _ , and then under it,  _ Persephone?? _ , before tucking it back into his pocket and hopping down off the chair. “I’ll see what I can do,” he promises, waving to Thanatos as he heads out of the office.

He has no intention of asking his father about Persephone, or anyone else in the Underworld, for that matter. His father would only get upset, convinced that Nico was meddling in things he could not comprehend. Which he is, Nico reasons to himself, but not the way his father would  _ think  _ he was meddling.

Nico retraces his steps through the access point near the E-Z Death lane. He steps into a shadow near the River Styx and melts through, straining his eyes to see as the world around him resolves into a thickly wooded trail. There’s a sign off to his left, identifying plants in the surrounding area by leaf shape. Off in the distance, he can hear the sounds of a school group, talking and laughing.

Despite Thanatos’s warnings, Nico fully intends to start looking for Persephone. It’s not the first time a demigod has gone after a missing goddess, he reasons - not even the most notable time in recent memory. He may as well start asking around.

As he walks, keeping an eye out for signs pointing him toward the greenhouses, he turns the problem over in his mind. This is the first he’s hearing about Persephone’s disappearance, which is strange, considering he was just at Camp Half-Blood not three days ago. If Persephone was  _ really  _ missing, there wouldn’t be a demigod on either side of the country who didn’t know by now. Her mother in particular would be losing it, for sure.

Unless she already knew where Persephone was.

Nico thinks about this as the woods fade into a manicured garden, with alternating patches of boardwalk path and concrete pavement twisting through carefully laid out ponds.

It’s a good thing he’s already going to see Demeter.

* * *

The New York Botanical Gardens have always been a favorite haunt of Demeter during the fall and winter. Everything seems to hang on just a little bit longer than the rest of the vegetation in the city - the greenhouses in particular feel somehow more vibrant than anything else. Nico had seen Demeter here once, in the middle of an unfortunate fight between him and Persephone, before the mess of the Second Giant War. He hopes she still likes to hang out here.

He wanders the park for a while, trying to remember the layout. It’s been three years since he was here last, and the garden staff has obviously changed much of the signage. Eventually, he finds a map, laying discarded underneath a bench, and his search goes much quicker.

The greenhouses are toward the south end of the gardens. By the time Nico gets there, the glass is starting to reflect light from the rapidly approaching sunset. He slips through a door into the humidity inside, and starts looking around.

Demeter herself is tending to an orange tree in a large raised flower bed, near the back of the central atrium. She’s wearing a pair of vibrant teal gardening gloves, and carefully snipping at one of the lower branches near the trunk with a small pair of gardening shears. Her hair is caught up in a gold bandana, and her jeans are smudged with dirt at the knees. The tree moves with her fingers, like someone getting a haircut, bending their head to the left and right as she pushes with her fingertips.

She sees Nico out of the corner of her eye, and her posture stiffens. Nico maintains a respectful distance on the red brick path, lowering his eyes in deference. “Lady Demeter,” he says softly.

He glances up at her face as she straightens up, tucking her gardening shears into the pocket of the apron she’s wearing. For a moment, she looks almost afraid, before she regains her customary look of wary dignity. “What do you want,” she asks. He can’t tell if she sounds exasperated, or outright hostile.

Nico, for want of anywhere else to look that wouldn’t be disrespectful, watches her hands. They sway about for a second, as though she can’t decide between crossing her arms or propping her hands on her hips, before she clasps them in front of her. “I just wanted to talk,” he tells her.

Of all the things she was expecting him to say, that appears to not have been one of them. Demeter’s posture relaxes a little bit with her confusion, as she tips her head to the side. He takes a deep breath, and meets her gaze, hoping he looks sufficiently honest.

After a moment, Demeter nods. She lowers herself to the edge of the flowerbed, her bandana wreathed in shiny green leaves. For a moment, Nico is reminded of Catholic icons next to the altarpiece of his mother’s church, their hands raised in benediction in front of them. He glances around, but doesn’t see anywhere he can sit without getting uncomfortably close. He remains standing and clears his throat.

“Persephone hasn’t returned to the Underworld,” he says, hoping he’s striking the correct balance between  _ concerned  _ and  _ nonjudgmental _ . “I don’t suppose you know where she is, do you?”

Demeter’s eyes narrow at him, but she doesn’t otherwise move. “Why should I know, she doesn’t listen to  _ me _ ,” she complains, gesturing with one gloved hand. Nico doesn’t say anything, and she leans away from him a bit, both hands waving now to make her point. “Maybe she decided that she didn’t want to go back, did anyone ever think of that? Who could blame her if she did?”

“Her return governs the seasons,” Nico says, almost apologetic.

“So she’s irresponsible! Honestly, I’ve always said it was a bad idea to entrust that big of a responsibility to-- To a child! That’s what she is, she’s a child, and children don’t-- They don’t listen! They don’t know what’s good for them!”

Demeter is fidgeting now, crossing her legs and then uncrossing them. He can see her anxiety under her theatrical indignation, but even deeper than that, there’s... Fear, maybe, and sadness. Nico hesitates, and then edges toward the wall of the raised flower bed. “May I sit,” he asks quietly.

She looks up at him, somewhere between outraged and sullen. After a few long moments, she looks away. “Do what you want,” she grumbles. “It’s not like  _ you _ would listen to me, either.”

Nico lowers himself down onto the wall, leaving a gap between them. He thinks carefully about what he wants to say. “Lady Demeter,” he says at last, keeping his voice gentle, and watches her turn her head just so and watch him out of the corner of her eye. “I know the past several years have been hard on Mount Olympus. It’s been a lot to deal with, all at once. No one can blame you for feeling afraid for your daughter.”

Demeter almost flinches at that. “How could you possibly understand,” she mutters. It sounds more anxious than perhaps she intended.

“My family’s been in danger, too,” he says carefully. “People I love have been on the front lines this whole time, and... I haven’t been able to protect them.”

He pauses, and takes a deep breath. “The fact is,” he says carefully, “I  _ can’t  _ protect them, because it just... It isn’t my place. I can  _ help  _ them, but I can’t keep them from getting hurt, just because I don’t want them to get hurt.” He laces his fingers together between his knees, bracing his elbows on his thighs. “It wouldn’t be fair to them, and it wouldn’t be useful, either.”

Demeter is silent, her shoulders slumped a little bit. Nico watches her expression carefully, planning his next words. “Persephone is a goddess in her own right,” he says gently. “She’s always going to be your daughter, but she  _ is  _ a goddess, with children of her own and a kingdom to help run. She has to be allowed to go back to that.”

“It isn’t  _ fair _ ,” Demeter says, her tone heartbroken and insistent. “She’s my  _ baby _ . How could the rest of the gods send her back there?”

Nico shrugs. “I don’t know. But, Lady Demeter? She’s  _ happy  _ there. Maybe not the same way she is when she’s with you, but she  _ is  _ happy. And she  _ does  _ come back, doesn’t she? And she goes away again, and comes back again. For thousands of years, Persephone  _ has  _ come back.”

Demeter bends forward, mirroring his posture with her elbows on her knees. It’s not terribly dignified for a goddess, but Nico would like to believe it means that she’s less likely to vaporize him or turn him into some sort of fruit-bearing plant. They sit in silence together for a long time, listening to the faint rustling of leaves as the trees are stirred by large, hidden fans somewhere in the greenhouse.

At last, Demeter sighs. “You know,” she says, her voice soft and sounding almost defeated, “you remind me of your father, when he was much, much younger.” Nico glances at her out of the corner of his eye, studiously biting his tongue. “Before the Underworld, I mean. Before any of it. He was...empathetic, I suppose. Diplomatic, certainly, even more than Athena has ever been.” She sits back up, looking toward the glass ceiling high overhead. “I find it hard to think of him that way, most of the time. He’s so different now.”

Nico nods, without any way of knowing whether or not she’s right. After another moment, he leans toward her a little bit. “She’ll be okay,” he assures her again.

Demeter closes her eyes, pressing her lips together. When she opens them again, she looks toward Nico, and her expression is that of someone who has just done something that they already regret. “I hope you’re right,” she tells him. “I really do.”

* * *

Nico goes back to Camp Half-Blood. He has chores, he knows, but he’s already solved his quota of problems today, and he desperately needs a nap. It’s past dinner time when he shuffles up to the marble stoop of Cabin Thirteen, and he can vaguely hear the sounds of what can only be a Spoons tournament up at the Big House. He smiles wearily at it and pushes into his cabin.

His bed is still unmade from when he rolled out of it shortly before leaving several days ago. Nico kicks off his jeans and burrows under the covers, pressing his face against the pillow and curling the blanket up around his ears. He’s asleep in minutes.

There’s greyish-tinted color filtering in through the stained glass set above the door when Nico wakes up. He yawns, rolling over to glance at the alarm clock before drifting asleep again. He wakes up again several minutes later, and lays there for a while longer before sitting up in bed. His cabin is messy, even by his standards - either he’s been lucking out on cabin inspection while he’s been away, or he’s got a mountain of chores to deal with when the rest of the counselors finally catch him.

He slides out from underneath the covers, stretching as he heads for the bathroom. After brushing his teeth and pulling a pair of jeans and a moderately unstained t-shirt out of the laundry pile next to the bathroom door, he does his best to restore some kind of order to the rest of the cabin. By the time he heads out for breakfast, it’s not great, but he can at least see most of the available floor space again. He promises himself that he’ll give it a more thorough cleaning once he’s dealt with the thing in Rockaway Beach, knowing that in all likelihood, he probably won’t.

There’s a few cabins straggling up to the dining pavilion as he makes his way across the lawn. Annabeth waves at him from her table as he mounts the steps, and he waves back.

Nico scrapes part of his scrambled eggs into the fire. As he does, he glances toward the lawn between the cabins. It’s an idle gesture - he’s not expecting to see anything - but as he looks up, he sees a figure in a sundress and a denim jacket striding toward the dining pavilion, and he pauses, nearly losing the rest of his breakfast to the fire.

Persephone advances up the steps of the dining pavilion, her wedge sandals clicking on the flagstones. For a moment, the smoke from the offering brazier bends toward her, swirling around her in thin ribbons like a candle just blown out, and she seems to glow for the briefest of seconds. Conversation around the pavilion dims, and several of the satyrs and dryads gasp at the sight of her.

Chiron stands from the head table. “My lady,” he says respectfully, approaching carefully. “We are honored by your presence. How may we serve the Queen of the Underworld?”

Persephone blinks at it, as though she’s unused to being addressed this way, before her posture straightens, and she smiles at him. “I was hoping I might have breakfast with-- With Nico di Angelo this morning,” she says, and glances down at him. “If he’ll have me.”

Nico stares at her, dumbstruck for just a second too long. “Of course,” he rushes to say, waving his fork toward his customary table. Persephone nods to Chiron and follows Nico to the table, dismissing him from further pleasantries. He returns to his own place, but watches her warily as he does.

She sits down across from him, hands smoothing her skirt under her. It’s an oddly vulnerable gesture - she seems unsure of herself. Nico taps his fork against the edge of his plate, too nervous to eat until a dryad brings Persephone a plate of her own, piled high with grapes and sliced fruit. The goddess thanks the dryad graciously, and then, when the nymph’s back is turned, waves a hand over a bundle of grapes and picks up a chicken, egg, and cheese sandwich on an everything bagel.

Nico clears his throat. “I, um. I’m happy to see you’re well, my lady,” he says, trying hard not to mumble as he spears a forkful of his eggs.

It takes her a while to answer. She takes a bite of her sandwich, chewing thoughtfully. He glances down at the eggs on his fork, and sets the utensil down, uneasy about eating in her presence. She blinks at it, and swallows. “Please, eat,” she says, her voice soft and possibly embarrassed. “I think I’m nervous enough for the both of us.”

Nico’s head cocks to the side before he realizes what’s happening. “Nervous?”

She sets her sandwich down. “I know what you did for me,” she says quietly. Nico glances around, but no one else seems to have taken notice of what she’s saying. “I was imprisoned in my own bedroom on Olympus - my mother’s doing, apparently, although I wasn’t sure.” Persephone pauses. “She...said you had spoken to her. Convinced her to release me.” Nico clears his throat awkwardly, but Persephone continues. “I don’t know what you said, all I know is that it  _ worked _ . You...”

She trails off, and it appears neither of them know quite what to say. At last, Persephone plucks a grape off its stem and rolls it between her fingertips. “I have been unfair to you, son of my husband,” she says, and if Nico’s not mistaken, she sounds oddly mournful about it. “My position is... Tenuous, at times, straddling heaven and hell. I have become jealous and resentful of my husband’s other children, I know.”

“I understand,” Nico says softly, looking down at the table. “It’s okay. Really.”

Persephone sighs, and when he looks up, her head is tilted to the side. She reaches across the table and cradles his cheek in her fingers. “No, it isn’t,” she says gently. “You had no reason to help me, and yet you did. Thanatos didn’t even know you had gone.” She smiles, turning her hand to brush her knuckles against his face. “I’m very grateful, Nico.”

Nico smiles awkwardly back and takes a bite of his eggs. They eat in silence for a while, boy and goddess across the table from each other. At last, Persephone laces her hands together on the table, between herself and her plate. “I have a request,” she says carefully. Nico looks up at her. Of course, any interaction with a god would come with a to-do list. She clears her throat, looking away from him for a moment. “I have no human children of my own,” she says. “I... There’s no good way for a god to adopt a mortal, I suppose. The closest we come is appointing favored champions. But I would like to-- To acknowledge you as my step-son, I suppose. A child of my house, at any rate.”

Nico blinks at her. This isn’t even approaching the list of things he had expected to hear today. He’s silent for a second too long, and she presses her lips together, looking down at the table. “I understand if you are unwilling--”

“No,” he says quickly, and only belatedly realizes that he’s interrupted a goddess, and also his stepmother who likes turning him into daisies. But he rushes ahead anyway, hoping to reassure her. “No, I was just-- Surprised, is all. I-- Are you... Are you sure?”

Persephone gives him a small, girlish smile. It’s so different from the Persephone he’s used to encountering in the Underworld. “If you’d have me, of course I’m sure.”

Nico smiles back, a little dazed by the suddenness of it. “Then I’d be honored, my lady.” After a pause, he asks, “Is there some kind of-- I don’t know, ceremony? Do I need to say an oath to you or something?”

She shrugs. “I honestly have no idea. But...you could start by calling me Persephone. If you wanted.” 


End file.
